Ah, The Holidays are upon us again.

What's it mean? It means that people shop, full of fear and anger, to buy small objects so other people won't hate them. The sale of these small objects, in tremendous volume, drive our economy. They also produce tremendous waste. Think about it: A twenty-year-old in a family of four will receive at least three gifts per year for twenty years. That's sixty gifts. Each gift will amuse him or her for a few months. At some point they will all be discarded, possiby while moving. Assuming each present is a small hunk of plastic (let's say half a pound), we have a total of thirty pounds of plastic being just chucked out. Per person. That's not to think of the waste involved in the manufacture, packaging, shipping and wrapping of the gifts. Lots of waste.

That's why I'm proud to say that all of my Christmas presents this year are 100% carbon free and zero-waste. That's right, this year I am giving everyone lap dances. People are welcome to decline of course, and I expect that most people will. That's okay. Their loss.

So what am I giving to NolanWhyte.com visitors this year? Maybe a lap dance video on YouTube? No, I don't think so. Maybe some new fiction, maybe some art, or maybe a new chapter of Our Man Evans? That would be nice. Gosh, I'm curious to find out myself, now. And boy, the pressure is on to come through with something. Gee, I wish I hadn't said anything at all.

But it's too late for that. To work, to work! There is much to be done. Keep your eyes open, people. I'll be back with something fresh for you by the time old Saint Nick drops half a pound of plastic down your chimney.

Nolan Whyte.

Well, it looks like old NolanWhyte.com hasn't been getting much love lately, has it? I haven't been updating this site very often over the last two months. Most of my energy has been going into the Guitargasm! series over at Ultimate-Guitar.com, and with the exception of a few new chapters for Our Man Evans, there has been little in the way of updates.

And why is that? Well, time is the number one factor. The priority list has work and family as number 1A and 1B. You figure that family would be alone at number one, but without the day-job the family is on the street, right? After that comes the U-G series, and in lowly fourth place is Our Man Evans and poor old NolanWhyte.com.

Oops, uh-oh, it looks like Evans will actually drop down to fifth place, since I am now undertaking yet another major writing project. This one will probably not be seen by any of the regulars either here or at U-G, but it will allow me to earn a bit of money and maybe take some new chances creatively.

So what's the bottom line here? Well, it sounds to me like Evans updates will be a little fewer and further between. I want to be clear that Evans will be completed, but as it has been since it started back in May, it will remain a side project.

The material will keep on coming. Keep loose, people, and keep checking back. There will be more, more, more.

Cheers,

Nolan Whyte.

So, after eight and a half months and more than one hundred thousand words, the Page-A-Day comes to an end. Am I sad? No, just relieved. There's a lot of pressure involved in trying to crank out a daily entry, and I'm glad I'll have a little more time to think over what I'll be putting up on the site from here on out.

The Page-A-Day archive will stay up on the site until the end of September, and then it will get yanked, as I turn my attention to "The Next Big Thing," which is always the top priority around here.

And what will the next big thing be? Well, I've already let the cat out of the bag to pretty much anyone who will listen that I'll be writing a second fiction series for my good friends at Ultimate-Guitar.com. It will not be a sequel to Comeback Road, but will instead deal with all-new characters in all-new situations. But rocking out on guitars will still be the heart and soul of the material. Does this mean I will set aside my bass and finally learn how to play guitar? Probably not, no.

It will be October before the first installment of that series appears, and when it does turn up, it will be exclusive to U-G. So what will be happening here on the home site? I'll continue posting chapters of Our Man Evans, as well as other pieces of fiction and hopefully some more comics (it's been a while). My focus will be on the U-G story, but since I no longer have an obligation to produce every single day, I should be able to work on a few different things at once.

Oh yeah, and my wife will be having a baby in the next day or two, so as you can imagine I might not update the site for a little while. I'm practically addicted to updating by now, but somehow I'll find a way to hold back. Don't worry. When I have something relevant to say I'll send a letter out to those on the mailing list and let everyone know.

That's all for now, I guess. I'll write again when necessary, but for now it's time to kick back and enjoy not having to think about what comes next for a few days. Peace, y'all.

Nolan Whyte.

Marking Time: A Note on This Project (From The Page-A-Day, July 31, 2007)

This brings us to the close of the seventh month of Page-A-Day entries. Mother of crap, what a lot of work it has been thus far, and what a learning experience as well. It took only six and a half months to make it the longest thing I had ever written, and somehow, without being planned for, it has also become the most politically motivated thing I've undertaken.

The lion's share of the project has been devoted to a novel in progress that I've given the working title "End City," featuring poor lost Bill and his cohort John. The story was born out of two different things. First was the realization that coming up with a fresh idea every single day was simply impossible. It took only until January 9th for me to start a long project that I could pick up and continue each day without having to stress about a new topic.

The second impetus for the novel was the desire to write a far-out gonzo story with a real anything-goes aesthetic approach, possibly inspired by a re-reading of Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I wanted to play in a rules-free environment where subject matter and point of view would be completely malleable, so that each day when I sat down I could do anything and go in any direction as my mood suited me. The heavy drug use in the early weeks shows a more direct influence from the Thompson text.

It was months before the actual story sorted itself out, and I was very surprised when it did. I had no idea where I was going. I certainly had no idea the project would be so preachy.

All this has been done as an ongoing side project to other writing projects. When I started the Page-A-Day I was still finishing work on In The Van on Comeback Road, the story that attracted most of you (I would conservatively guess 99.9% of people reading this now) to this site. I continued writing short stories for the erotica sites that actually give me money for writing, started and abandoned a new music writing project, and then settled on a new novel project called "Our Man Evans." The completely unexpected thing was that these eventually all turned into side projects for the Page-A-Day.

Frequent visitors may be aware that my wife Mina and I have a kid on the way, and that a daily writing project will eventually become unsustainable. It has thus far been damn close to daily; with the exception of the week off I took for dental surgery, I have managed to keep up about a six day per week average (hard-cores might go through and find this is not true for the first couple of months, but this is because certain entries were removed for personal reasons).

Naturally when baby comes, this will be a much lower priority. It is unlikely that I will take the project all the way to December 31st as I had planned, but I promise you this: the "End City" story will be completed to my own satisfaction (and hopefully yours as well). It is possible that when it is concluded the Page-A-Day project will also end, or it may be that I will carry it on with the "Our Man Evans" story. I may scale it back to a less relentless schedule. I'm not sure. I hope to remain relentless through August at least, and from there it will simply be a process of finishing the novel when I can find the time.

I want to thank my regular visitors for your loyalty, and I want to express my intense satisfaction that you have been sufficiently amused to keep coming back. If you have been returning for this long I know that you have an emotional investment in this story, and I promise that you will see its end.

We'll get back to the story tomorrow, if we manage an entry tomorrow. My schedule is nuts. We've had house guests this past weekend, and will again for the next few days. Bah! Excuses are for the weak and incapable. Anyway, we'll get back to the story soon. Thanks for reading this mindless rant. See you in August.

Nolan Whyte.

Hey everyone,

I know a lot of you are guitar renegades, and I wanted to tell you about the music I listen to when I'm working on the site.

I listen to different stuff when I'm doing other things (painting, going to work, etc), but I almost always listen to the same stuff over and over again when I'm writing.

My current work obsession is with David Bowie's old stuff. I got my hands on half a dozen old Bowie discs last year, and they are on almost constant rotation while I'm typing. Diamond Dogs is playing while I'm typing this. Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory have also been receiving a lot of play, but the standout record is Pin Ups, which I probably play as much as those other three put together. It's just one of those albums, man, where every single song is just one of 'those songs,' where you listen to it and think you know it, so you listen to it ten more times until you do know it. We know all of these songs. They are sewn into the bones of our culture. Pin Ups, man. Learn to play every song.

This is a departure from last year when I was working almost exclusively on In The Van on Comeback Road, which was written to the music of The Rolling Stones. Specifically, the four albums, the four golden albums that are the absolute heart of what rock and roll is: Beggar's Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. I swear man, I would sit writing, and listen to a song I had heard fifty times already and I would have to stop and back it up and listen to some little tiny thing over again, because these albums are just so rich. They bear listening to again and again and again, and there could be no better music for writing a novel about rock and roll.

Sadly, I will never be able to listen to those four albums for the first time again, but I know there is a hell of a lot of other music out there for when I start writing the next thing.

Sweet. Bowie is singing "Rebel Rebel" right now. That is such an great song. Great riff.

Go listen to a great album, right now. Don't just listen to a great song; listen to a great album the whole way through. Cheers people.

Nolan Whyte.

Welly welly well, what kind of week has it been for you? It's been a very low key week for me, focused mostly on lying in bed and drinking smoothies. I've had a lot of smoothies, and I tell you, it is possible to live on an all smoothy diet. I've grown quite used to it. In fact, I'm starting to think chewing is for suckers.

The drugs I was given were a bit of a let down. Although they did indeed "kill pain," they did not send me on a blissfull snooze-flight through dreamy land. I thought this week would be a kind of personal drug revolution, but alas, it was mostly just lying in bed, reading, playing some computer games and scribbling in various notebooks.

Scribbling what, you ask? Oh yes, I forgot. You people are here because you want to read the things that I write. I have to say, that's awesome. I would be more than happy to tell you what I've been writing. Mostly, I've been doing sketches for my next long project, which has been very slow in taking shape. I think I'm finally getting an idea what direction it will go, but just to speed things along, I thought would share a chunk of it.

So two little pieces of fiction have been posted. One is unnamed; it is really just an introductory chunk of wordage. I think it will grow into something much bigger. I have themes planned out. Most curious themes. Serious themes. And lots of sex and drugs (unlike everything else I write).

A second short piece was put in there as well, called "Janey's Boots." This was something out of the notebooks that has no place anywhere else. This is the type of thing I would be reading at poetry readings if I still went to them.

That reminds me, if anyone knows anything about cool poetry readings in the Toronto area, let me know. This city seems to be dead for them.

Anyway, there's lots more on the way. Let me know if you like/don't like the direction things are going. Let me know what you want to see more of, etc. I aim to please, although mostly I just want to please myself.

Cheers peoples,

Nolan Whyte.

So what's the deal? I suppose it's time to explain what the hell I've been up to, regarding my recent false-start writing project, Cover Band Blues. In case you haven't picked up the hint, the first chapter, which was posted both here at nolanwhyte.com and on ultimate-guitar.com, will also be the last chapter. There will be no follow up chapters to the story, whether I have any success with the Ramones cover band or not.

Why? I've started it, why not carry on? Well, there are several reasons, but the most important one is that I never should have started it in the first place. There was no need for it. After working for a year on Comeback Road, I really have no interest in plugging away on another musician story.

Also (and this was mentioned in reader responses to the first chapter on U-G), I am not a blogger and have no interest in becoming one. I am not interested in stretching the shape of my life into an interesting narrative shape. I know this is not what most bloggers do, but it is what I would do, and that's not what I'm interested in. I write fiction. I just want to make shit up, and not have to worry about making sure the mundane events of a band practice are interesting enough for a readership.

Obviously posting the first chapter was premature. I was excited with the prospect of having something to contribute to U-G, and it hasn't been easy settling on a new project since completing Comeback Road. However, I'm not interested in compromising and writing something I don't care about just because U-G will post it.

In Comeback Road, Terry states that "To me, there is only one thing that describes rock and roll, and that is urgency. If the music drags, if it becomes a chore, a struggle to make it through the song then it is not rock and roll... It is danger. It is need. Unless the music has the feeling that it is the only thing that can save you from death, than it is nothing. It is a waste."

This is also true of writing. I will not devote my time to something that has no sense of urgency about it, that I don't feel needs to be written. Cover Band Blues does not need to be written.

So what the hell have I been working on? And what the hell is coming up on the site? Well, I can tell you that the Page-A-Day will continue. It has gathered a small crowd of hard-core fans, and I'll make sure they get their daily fix. That said, I will be missing a few days later in the month while I have all of my wisdom teeth out (pain-killer vacation! Whoo-hoo!)

Fiction will be added as it is written, as will web-comics (which are a hell of a lot of fun to make). So wait and see. I'm not finished with this shit yet.

Nolan Whyte.

Hey Team,

Nice to see you're all still with us. If you've taken a quick look at the site, you've probably noticed that a lot of older content has been removed. Why? Simply put, it's time to clean house. A lot of old junk has been collecting dust and this is the first opportunity I've had to sift through some of it and put it in the unseen archive.

Conspicuously missing is the Comeback Road page. Yep, it's no longer available for perusal here on the site, although it will remain in ultimate-guitar.com's archive. I want to make room for newer content, and as well, Comeback Road has been edited and revised, and I don't like having the older version on-line here.

On the positive side, new content is being added. I'm taking another shot at singing for a Ramones cover band, and I'm going to write about it. The first part has been posted on the site, with more to come. No looking back, people. Let's move forward!

The page-a-day carries on, although I'm playing fast and loose with what is going into it each day. It won't always feature the same ongoing amnesia storyline, but will just follow my moods a bit more. More free-association, I think.

Anyway, I hope you still drop in now and again and see what I'm doing. Cheers,

Nolan Whyte.

Good day to you all,

The time has come. I have finished writing In The Van On Comeback Road. It's a time of conflicting feelings, let me tell you. The story has drawn a huge audience, which is wonderful, and I'm very sad that ending the story will disappoint so many people that have been enjoying it. I've had a lot of emails from young people saying that they are fans, and that Comeback Road is the only thing that they've really enjoyed reading, which is terrific. Unfortunately though, it can't go on forever.

Why not? Why can't it last forever? Well, mostly because if it carried on too long it would become very stale. You can only make up stories about so many gigs before they just seem repetitive, believe me. Also, I wanted to carry these characters forward to a certain point, and then leave them. I wanted to take Terry's band from being the total mess it was in the first few chapters to the road-hardened, tight unit it is at the end. To me, this was never a story about getting famous. It was a story about the human relationships between the members of the band. Bands come and go and not many of them make it to the top, but all of them have to deal with the arguements, jealousies, victories and losses that The Clutch Dogs have to deal with. That was the story I wanted to tell.

So what's next? A lot of people have sent me suggestions about what I should write next, and a lot of them revolve around writing similar stories about other bands. "In The Van On Death Metal Road," etc, etc. Although I will certainly be starting new writing projects, they will not center around rock bands. Why? Because I've said about all I have to say on the subject. I will certainly continue writing about music, and I will continue contributing to Ultimate-Guitar.com, but I don't expect to start another major writing project focusing on a rock band.

I will probably spend a lot of time this year trying to find a publisher for Comeback Road, but in my spare time I will continue generating fresh material for this site, in the form of more fiction, essays, comics and art, and (I hope eventually) some music recordings. The Page-A-Day will continue as well.

I would like to thank everyone for their support. I probably would not have finished writing this thing if it weren't for the incredibly positive response every single chapter recieved. I love you all, in buddy-friend kind of way. Rock everyone. Rock. It will heal your soul. Learn to play a new song before you go to bed tonight. Please.

Cheers all,

Nolan Whyte.

Well, Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone!

I gather you've all figured out what my big news is. Yes, my wife Mina is carrying a person in her tummy. My oh my, have we grown up already? Are we breeding and reproducing? It appears we are. Gosh, maybe it's time to get a job or something. Get a career! Stop all this foolishness! Really? Naah!

No, I'll be carrying on this silly time-wasting crap for a while more. Page-A-Day might get a little hit-and-miss, but I'll do my best to keep it up. And as for Comeback Road...

We have almost reached the end of Comeback Road. Yes. Here is a major difference between reading a story online and holding a book in your hand: when you are holding a book in your hand, you can see how close you are getting to the end. Not so with an online story, so I am giving you your warning. There are just a couple weeks of life left in this animal before we move onto the next big thing.

Ah, a fresh start. How bold, how exciting! But first we rev this fucker, then we wrap it up. Peace everyone! Lots of laughs for all!

Nolan Whyte.

Hello Team,

Some readers have noted with frustration that the waits between Comeback Road chapters are sometimes long, but that I manage to post a Page-A-Day every day, pretty much without fail. These readers are wondering, why don't I spend less time on Page-A-Day and more time on Comeback Road? Well, here is your long answer:

I work very differently on each writing project. Comeback Road requires a lot of fore-thought for each chapter. Each part is usually around 2,000 words and is best written in a few long sittings, usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when I have my days off. They take planning. They take long writing sessions.

Page-A-Days, on the other hand, are easily pooped out in fifteen minutes before I go to bed at night in what has become a nice day-end ritual for me. They require no fore-thought at all. I just make up the silliest shit I can think of. They are very easy to write, and because they are very short, I don't need to put much work into them.

So I could not possibly use the time I spend on Page-A-Day to write Comeback Road chapters. Okay? Right. Back to work now.

Nolan Whyte.

Well, it was an eventful couple of days here in The Mossbunker, located deep in seedy heart of The Big Ugly (The Torontopotamus, or Torontosaurus Rex). Anyone who attempted to stop by NolanWhyte.com in the last few days probably found themselves at a default message from doteasy, my web host. Yes, I did that thing where you run way over your host's traffic allowance and hope they won't notice until the end of the month. Well, they let me slide for about a week, but when I was about thirty percent over my limit they brought the hammer down.

So, for the second time in two months I've had to amp up the power of the site. And why? Because it's just so damn popular, I guess. I'm getting a thousand hits a day most days, which is truly awesome. It somewhat justifies the absolute crapload of work I do trying to generate content for the site to keep it fresh daily-weekly-monthly.

And so, we will keep hammering away, working hard to make the site even more popular, more fun to visit, and see if we can break the traffic meter again. Can we do it? I don't know. In November I doubled the limit. The new limit in February will be ten times that amount again. It makes my head hurt to think about it.

Anyway, I'll do my best to keep it fresh, and especially to keep the Comeback Road series regular and of the best quality I'm capable of. I know that's why many of you visit. All the best,

Nolan Whyte.

Well, what have you learned in the last few days? I can tell you what I've learned. It's not easy trying to sort out a t-shirt contest and make the t-shirts available for purchase over the internet. It's not easy working full time and trying to run a website. I went to a going away party for a co-worker on Saturday night and I swear it put me days behind. And it's not easy trying to keep up with the writing project I'm half way through.

Trying to set up the t-shirts has been a massive time-sucker. I arranged to make them available through a website, but found that if a single t-shirt cost $25 US for the customer, I would get a big fat dollar. Sorry, but I think I can have the shirts made myself, sell them for less and keep at least two bucks. I'll have them available soon. I hope.

Even though I have not yet seen the comments on Comeback Road chapter 32 on ultimate-guitar.com, I get the idea that most readers view it as a lame-duck chapter. Well, I can't apologize for that. Do you know why? Because you can't have a story that runs as one long orgasm, chapter after chapter. There has to be peaks and valleys, so after one moment of high tension (say, a bar-fight and a band breaking up) we can begin building towards the next high point (when Terry discovers that Darth Vader is his father).

The end of chapter 32 represents a shift in focus, away from the conflict between the bands. What will come next? I know, but I can't tell you. Sorry. It should be tasty though.

In unrelated news about this website, I've been receiving a lot of e-mails from young writers asking me to check out their stuff. Some have asked for me to critique their work, and some have asked me to post their stories on this site. I'm sad to say that at this time I have no time for either one.

Critiquing another writer's work is hugely time-consuming, and tends to be emotionally draining. Also, It's nearly impossible to focus effectively on your own work while trying to help others. Bottom line: I'm far too much of a selfish bastard.

The good news is that there are a huge number of online writing communities where budding writers can post their work and have it critiqued by their peers. I can't recommend one over the others, but take a look around. The only other advice I have for other writers is to write all the time, whether you want to or not. Best of luck.

Nolan Whyte.

Hey there, Mr. Whyte,

I have a question for you. Are these stories based on real characters or are they just something you have made up? I've been reading Comeback Road since it came out. But it has now occured to me to ask if these are based on real events. Can you please tell me?

Thank you,

Joe.

Hey Joe,

I'm glad to hear you dig the story. It really is all made up. I got the idea after reading Dee Dee Ramone's book "Legend of a Rock Star," where Dee Dee writes his journal of touring Europe with a couple guys to promote a solo album. I thought, we hear stories about the big rock stars all the time. It would be interesting to tell the story of some guys at the bottom rung of rock'n'roll, trying to hold on by their fingernails and win a little respect. All the characters are made up, and all the situations and events in the story are fiction as well. I'm a big music fan and I'm a writer, so it has been surprisingly easy and fun to tell this story. I'm glad everyone likes it so much.

Cheers,

Nolan Whyte.

Season's Greetings all. 2006 is winding down and I've been trying to work up a game plan for 2007 regarding this website and my work in writing and visual art.

The site has turned into the focus for most of my creative energy, which you may find hard to believe considering how completely low-tech it may appear. NolanWhyte.com looks as simple as it does because my energy is devoted to generating and posting new content instead of spending all day with Flash and Dreamweaver trying to make the interface pretty.

The traffic here at NolanWhyte.com has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few months, and since we have more visitors, I've been working hard to update the site as often as possible so you will always find something new and cool when you stop by. I would hate to think that nine out of ten visits involve people saying "Nope, he hasn't updated it yet." In order to make sure there is always fresh content, I am going to make some bold promises about our schedule in 2007.

First and foremost, we will continue posting new chapters of In The Van On Comeback Road every week until the novel reaches its conclusion. That's right, every damn week. No skipping!

A new piece of writing, be it fiction, poetry, journal or whatever will be added to the front page daily. That's right: we're going to go for a daily update. Failing that, we'll probably try for an original posting at least four or five times a week.

More comics like "Late Night Television" will be added, probably one every month.

More fiction features, personal stories and other content will also be added as frequently as possible. I'm still working at getting some music recorded and available for download. Also, the weblog will be updated more frequently with our comings and goings, probably twice a month.

It's entirely possibly that the site will require a facelift to make it more easily navigable. Hopefully this can be done without any hassle to visitors and without any content going offline. My goals for NolanWhyte.com in 2007 are very simple: bigger, better, more.

Stay warm and have some hot chocolate,

Nolan Whyte.

So it may sound as though I'm not very pleased about the addition of the ads. Why have I put them on my site then? Well, the simple reason is that, for good or ill, traffic to this site has increased by massive leaps and bounds during the month of November. I went from getting a thousand hits every few months to a thousand every few days, which maxed out my traffic limit. I had to pay my server to boost my limit. I think I'll need to boost it again soon as well.

I love that more people are visiting the site. It's very rewarding for me in every way except financially. Basically I make no money at all doing this site. Nothing. It costs me money. I'm okay with that, as long as the money it costs me is minimal, because I am not a wealthy person (I hope to one day save up enough to be poor). Putting advertising on the site is one way for me to make up some of the cash that running the site costs me.

Anyway, I hope the ads don't get in the way of the "retro coolness" of the site. "Retro coolness" is really what I've been striving for. "Retro" in this case means "I have no programming or design skills so the site looks like it was made in a high school computer applications class in 1997." At least, that's what I hope it looks like.

So visit many, many more times, and soak up the cool. I'll keep plugging away here, hopefully updating it more often than I have in the last few weeks. I would prefer my time on the site be spent generating content and not ads, so that will be my aim for the next while. Happy December all.

Nolan Whyte.

Seeing the popularity of my work makes me think I need to cut back on my day job and focus more on writing. That appears to be impossible however, since I don't really earn any coin doing this. I was thinking I should make t-shirts or something. Fake band shirts for The Clutch Dogs and Machine Within a Machine could probably earn me a cool twenty or thirty bucks a year, which is a lot of money if you live in...naah, that's not a lot of money no matter where you live.

I decided to start posting Comeback Road here because of a month-long delay in getting a chapter posted at the story's usual home, ultimate-guitar.com. They explained the delay was due to moving offices. That's cool. They've been good to me and have exposed my work to a world-wide audience, so I'll keep sending them chapters as long as they'll post them. I like the idea of people being able to read them here as well though.

I've been generating some material for other sites as well, and hopefully I'll have news about forthcoming publications in the next while. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the fall. Oh yeah: Mina and I will be having a double birthday party at The Mossbunker on Friday. I hope everyone can make it. Rock on,

Nolan Whyte.

In my third year of university I had a course with the esteemed Doctor Susan Johnston, and the debate in a particular session focused on the attainability of satisfaction. One of the students was arguing that it is possible to still desire something even while possessing it. The discussion smacked of sexual innuendo, but we used the metaphor of eating ice cream instead. It may be possible to desire the ice cream even while eating it, but that means satisfaction has not been attained. Within this metaphor, satisfaction is only attained when the thing possessed is no longer desired.

If we transfer this to the artistic fields, it means that the person who is writing a novel (painting a picture, recording an album, rehearsing a play) does not want to do the activity any more once the event (novel, painting, play, etc) is complete.

If however, you finish one project and want to/need to immediatly start another project (be it for career reasons, financial reasons, enthusiasm, whatever) you are clearly not satisfied with what you've thus far done, even if you are immensely happy with it.

Can you be artistically fulfilled if you feel the need to immediatly start work on something else? It seems so tricky. Artists who achieve real success with one project seem to spend all of their time discussing that one project. They are not allowed to move on, even though it is, as Jack London says in Martin Eden, "work performed." They are stuck discussing the past instead of moving on to new projects. Who wants to talk about the past?

For the second time in a row, I will quote Bill Burroughs on the matter, who once spoke of his own "complete dissatisfaction with everything I have done in writing...Unless writing has the danger and immediacy, the urgency of bullfighting, it is nowhere to my way of thinking...I am tired of sitting behind the lines with an imperfect recording device receiving inaccurate bulletins...I must reach the front."

So say we all.

Nolan Whyte.

I've got some fiction finished and sent off, although I'm not sure if it will surface anywhere. Likely some will turn up at Ruthie's Club, the pay-adult "literotica" site which has been posting some of my work lately. Of course, there's always the need to display your work in as many places as possible, so why not my own website? So I've placed some old, battered, weather-beaten stories on this very site.

But what else is there to say about my life now that I'm here in The Big Ugly? I've found that boredom is less inspiring than some people think, and that given the choice, my "day job" would be more like a carnival of carnal delights, full of conundrums and paradoxes, bizarre sights and weird people, and altogether less like standing in the same spot all goddamn day.

However, you've got to get a mantra, and a mantra will solve dilemnas for you if you repeat them often enough. When you have troubles and hard times, just repeat your mantra and it will give you clarity and focus. The mantra that I repeat when I'm bored at work? It's something like "I don't spend time writing so I can earn money. I earn money so I can spend time writing."

Of course, mentioning one clever line will make you want to mention good lines you've heard from others. Such as a goodie from Douglas Coupland, which should inspire artists in all fields: "We generate stories for you because you don't save the ones that are yours."

A little less encouraging from William S. Burroughs: "Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and reletive..."

But I've gone down the road to digression. It's time to head out. There's a city out there for me to explore and bother. Cheers, people. I'll be in touch again soon.

Nolan Whyte.

I had quite a lot of loose paper to file through and shred while I was preparing to leave, and I came across a few lists I had made in the summer of 2005. During a period of unemployment I met with a career counselor who encouraged me to make a list of goals I had in mind, whether tangible (I want millions in my bank before I turn 30) or intangible (I want to be lusted after by millions before I turn 30). I made up a few different drafts of the list, and reading them over now I was surprised by two things: first by the fact that I had accomplished very few of the tangible goals, and second by how many things on the list would not appear if I made a new list today, only ten months later.

Since this is the end of my time in Regina, it makes sense to take a look over these lists so I can laugh at my own failures, despite the fact that this has been, from an artistic point of view, a very successful year. After all, my work is now appearing regularly on the prestigious internet, I had writing appear in a real print magazine, and although I failed to put together a new band or complete work on any serious visual art projects, I have actually been paid for my writing. I would view that as a minor success. To document my failures, letĄŻs go to the list.

I have done significant work on none of the twenty or so books I have pledged to write during my career. To be fair I have done significant work on the rock and roll novel I envisioned, and seeing its chapters posted on ultimate-guitar.com is a lot of fun. Nonetheless, I can't say for sure whether this will yield a publishable novel. Other writing projects, such as a year long dream journal, a poetry collection, a biographical novel based upon an undecided figure, various erotic novels and other zany projects never saw pen meet paper.

My venture into print journalism was a failure. It was my intention to become something of an entertainment writer and pop culture commentator, but I only managed to crank out some music reviews. Oh well. It was a small start, but a start nonetheless. I didn't conduct a single interview, delivered no papers at literary conferences, did not write a play which was produced and performed to acclaim, was not invited to go on a speaking tour, and also forgot to pitch my cartoon series to Teletoon.

I completed none of the several art projects I envisioned this year. Although I finished a few of the T.S. Eliot paintings and started work on eight of them, I did not present the work, and therefore my streak of years in which I produced a solo exhibition of my work will end at two. Ah yes, the exhibition streak of '04-'05, I will remember you fondly. No urban stories paintings, no collage books, no collection of experimental films. sigh

Music career? What music career? I did not get a band together, did not record a rock album, spoken word album or Ramones tribute album, and basically allowed my bass to gather dust. And yet, why should the world care?

To my chagrin, I was not the subject of an Academy Award winning documentary. Can any words express my heartbreak?

I think it would be in my psychological best interests to never write a list of this type again, since the results seem ridiculous and depressing. This was, after all, a very good year. And it will only get better. Until tomorrow, I wish you all the best, and I encourage you to pursue your goals. I also encourage you to avoid writing them down.

Nolan Whyte.